Court rules Verizon doesn't owe Boston $5.3 million in back pole taxes

By adamg - 3/19/12 - 11:07 am

Ed. note: Post updated to clarify that the ruling was only on the poles between 2005 and 2009.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today that Verizon does not owe Boston $5.3 million in back taxes on its poles and wires over a four-year period.

The court said 150 years of telephone-related legislation in Massachusetts has consistently excluded overhead wiring along public ways from the personal-property tax - even as legislators have let cities and towns tax wiring that snakes under public ways.

The question became moot for future years in 2010, when the law was changed, city officials say.

Comments

Corporations' property is not inherently taxable because they're

By Dan Farnkoff - 3/19/12 - 4:12 pm

#1

not people- otherwise section 59 article 11 or whatever, declaring all "personal property" taxable unless expressly exempt, would apply to corporations the same way it does to individual actual people (this is the direction the SJC seemed to be headed in when I stopped reading).
So much for Citizens United and that whole line of reasoning (corporations are people for the purpose of the bill of rights, etc,), at least as far as Massachusetts taxation is concerned. But like I said I didn't read this whole decision- no need to dredge up unhappy memories.